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Colorado is rolling in oil and gas severance tax money, and a chunk of it should be used to help pay state residents' heating bills, say two leaders of the anti-tax movement.
"If oil prices continue to shoot up, instead of the state getting a massive windfall, Colorado families get to offset their heating costs," Jon Caldara said Tuesday.
Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, and Beth Skinner, state director of Colorado Freedom Works, have proposed a constitutional amendment they dub HEAT, or Home Energy Adjustment Tax-Rebate.

WASHINGTON - Gov. Bill Owens waded into the national immigration debate on Wednesday, pitching a proposed guest-worker plan on Capitol Hill amid an ongoing congressional debate over U.S. border policy.
The U.S. House started to tackle the enforcement side of the immigration equation this week and was preparing to debate legislation to toughen laws targeting illegal immigrants and the people who employ them.
For now, the House is putting off a debate on any guest-worker plan, which President Bush has said is essential for any comprehensive immigration reform.

With the battle over referendums C and D widely regarded as too close to call, the winner may be the side that gets most of its supporters to the polls.
Campaigns on both sides of the referendums are gearing up for big get-out-the-vote drives before Tuesday's election. Hundreds of people will spend the next week knocking on doors, phoning voters, and making lists of people committed to vote for their side.

Good news, Coloradans. The end is near.
One week from today, voters will decide the fate of Referendum C, the ballot measure that would let the state keep money normally refunded to taxpayers.
As the clock ticks, both sides are frantically trying to persuade last- minute voters.
Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute and a leading opponent of Referendum C, isn't sure of his strategy yet.
"I'm like Indiana Jones," he said Monday. "I just make this stuff up as I go along."

If timing is everything, well, it's been nothing but bad timing lately for higher education in Colorado.
Campus booze binges and student deaths by alcohol poisoning. Microscopic minority hiring numbers. Alleged rapes by football recruits. Professor Ward Churchill drawing the ire of a post-9/11 nation and under investigation for alleged plagiarism.
So when higher education comes, hat in hand, saying voters should fork over more taxpayer money when they go to the polls in 10 days, it faces a big hurdle.

Julie Caplan, 46, remembers being barely alive when an outreach worker found her living in a tent hidden in waist-high grass and concrete rubble between a creek and rusting vehicle hulks near 58th Avenue and Federal Boulevard.
After seven years without a home, she was hardly functioning. She ate little. She huddled around a candle inside her tent for heat. She hauled her water from a junkyard faucet. She prayed for God to take her in her sleep.

Adults across Ally Garcia's home state are arguing about how schools get money, whether they have enough and how the issue will affect Colorado's economy in the future.
But Garcia, a senior at Pueblo West High School, doesn't have time to worry about all that. She's done her own math.
Education equals opportunity. To get the best of both, she needs to go to college. To get there, she needs good test scores. To get those, she needs to study.
That's where things get tricky.

A coalition of environmental groups Tuesday predicted grim news for Colorado's air, water and land if state voters turn down Referendums C and D in November.
"Without Referenda C and D, the state may not be able to safeguard the water we drink and the air we breathe," said Elise Jones, executive director of the Colorado Environmental Coalition. "The health of Coloradans is at stake if we don't pass C and D."

Two more groups want to know who is supplying the money for radio ads blasting Referendums C and D, the twin measures on the November ballot.
Colorado Common Cause and the League of Women Voters held a news conference Wednesday, saying in a statement that keeping the names secret is "profoundly disrespectful to the people of Colorado."
They were referring to $391,000 of radio ads bought by the Independence Institute, a conservative think tank.

Supporters of Referendum C charged Monday that the nonprofit Independence Institute has spent around $400,000 on radio ads attacking the November ballot measure.
Katy Atkinson, spokeswoman for "Vote Yes on C&D," called on the metro area-based think tank to reveal its donors.
"This is not money the Independence Institute just happened to have on hand," Atkinson said. "It's money raised to fight Referendum C, and the voters have a right to know where that money came from."